track layout on 2" tape

[turnuptherock]

Hi Guys,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Quick question for the analog tape guys regarding the placement and layout of tracks on 2". I haven't had a great deal of tape experience and have heard from other engineers that it's advisable to be careful in where you lay your tracks out across the tape.

Typically the advice is don't put anything really important on the edge tracks, and be careful putting loud tracks next to quiet tracks (eg. blazing hot distorted guitar on say track 10 with a quiet shaker on track 11).

What i'm wondering is, do any of you have a typical/preferred layout of tracks for say a typical 4 piece (kit/bass/guitars/vocals) type pop/rock project? Have you done any experiements and found you get better results placing x away from or next to y for instance.

Assume here the tape machine is well maintained and has been aligned correctly.

Thanks!

[Rick Sutton]

I've never had any major cross talk problems with a well maintained 2" machine.
My layout has always been:
bass on 1
kick on 2
snare 3
rest of drums
then guitars, keys
vocals and overdubs on down the line.
SMPTE on 24 (if needed)

Maybe be careful with 23 if next to SMPTE on 24, but if you keep the SMPTE track down around -10 on your meters it is pretty safe to use 23 for most sounds.

[numrologst]

This is a setup with a tape i have on right now

1-Click
2-Scratch---->then tambourine
3-OH L
4-OH R
5-Room L
6-Room R
7-Kick
8-Snare
9-Floor Tom
10-Acoustic Guitar
11-Acoustic Guitar
12-Elec Guitar
13-Elec Guitar
14-Solo/Ear Candy Guitar
15-Solo/Ear Candy guitar
16-Claps
17-Claps
18-piano
19-Synth
20-Vibes
21-harmony
22-harmony
23-main vox
24- SMPTE or Scratch Guitar

[Jim Kerr]

I've heard Hats on 1. Kik 2, Sn 3, rk 4, etc. Size of wavform. I heard it was standard in Japan actually.

edit- Wow Main VOX on 23? is that because of console position?.. near your master section? Thats as close as you can get to the SMPTE. I'd throw dem VOX's between them claps, what do I know though.

[studjo]

If I wouldn't do anything with analog tape it would be putting vocals right next to the smpte. Though I only had 1 porblem with smpte in all my analog years - and it was really a small prob.
I had bass on 1 and kick on 2 - the rest was whatever I wanted it to be at the time.

Jo

[numrologst]

i was just giving an example of my track sheet that i got on the reel right now. There is no smpte on 24... It's a scratch guitar part that has a vocal count in

[Raw-Tracks]

As mentioned, a well maintained 2" machine really shouldn't have any problems. The only time I've run into trouble was with click on 23 and SMPTE on 24, where the click was interfering with the smpte. It was just a matter of having recorded the click too hot.

[djui5]

Keep in mind your console layout too. Some guys place tracks according to where they want them returned on the console. Of course you can always cross patch shit, but who wants to get up out of the chair?

[dbbubba]

I have recorded nine jillion cuts on 2" with this:
1) Kick
2) Snare
3) Toms L
4) Toms R
5) OH L
6) OH R
7) Room L
8) Room R
9) Bass D.I.
10) Bass Mic
GTRs... KYBDS... BG Vox.. Lead Vox...

SMPTE on 24 (23 with sparse tracking)

Few people record hotter than me (+9 over 185 even on 456 years ago) and I never had too much trouble with anything messing with the SMPTE on 24. With drum machine stuff on rap or hip hop stuff you'll get print through.

In fcat, you'll get print though between tape wind layers WAY before you'll ever get adjacent track bleed. Even if you do get a bit of bleed between tracks it doesn't really hurt anything. I have heard people say that it might be part of the "magic."

I'd rather have the Kick on TRACK #1 than anyhing else because it is just going DUNT DUNT DUNT ..... hard to mess up and pretty easy to trigger if there was a problem (which I never ever had.)

[godcity]

2 things i don't think anyone has mentioned yet...

#1) keep stereo pairs together because if your azimuth is off (or the azimuth of some other machine where the tracks are mixed) then you can have phasing between the pairs.

#2) cross talk can cause feedback problems when bouncing tracks. so, for example, when comping vocals, you may want to record your takes on 18, 19, 20, and 21, then comp them to track 23!

have fun!

[The Reel Thing]

When your heads start to wear out, it's gonna take place on the edge tracks 1 and 24 or 16, first. Tape-to-head contact will be less stable resulting in uneven HF response. SMPTE doesn't care so much because it's a multifrequence signal. But it's the reason why you record Kick or Bass on track 1 - it doesn't matter if they lose a bit around 20 K, does it?
On a well maintained machine track 1 and 24 should work just as well as any other track, and you could put your lead vocal on it.

Lead vocal next to SMPTE is always, always, always a bad idea. You never know how much you want to compress the vocal in the mix. Now your crosstalk on a good machine will be maybe -70 to -80 dB. If you take that 1176 and push a few buttons in and push that vocal, like 30 to 35 dBs on peaks, you're down to a crosstalk of around 40 dBs. Man, you can hear that SMPTE shine through like a star on quiet passages. No good. Lead vocals are best embedded between BV's, then crosstalk just glues them all together.

A hot guitar next to a shaker, on the other hand, isn't very dangerous. If the shaker is recorded at a decent level, how far up will your fader be (except in the shaker solo)?

It is a good idea to plan submixes a little ahead, because you can encounter feedback problems between adjacent tracks in record mode.

[ronzie]

I have'nt tracked analog in a while but when I do I keep 1&2 open as a matter of course to bounce stuff to and avoid troubles later. Having come up in a time where tapes would travel from studio to studio on a daily basis, I grew more paranoid & wary of other's machines conditions (alignment & maintanance) and would try to avoid fringe effect and edge wear by printing the basics more towards the center of the machine.

Ron Allaire, Skyline

[Jules]

I used to avoid edge track 1 for kick or lead vocals - and would put kick on track 2 or 3 - to avoid wear on the tape heads..

Nothing with a lot of transient energy next to SMPTE of tack 24 (hi hats / tambo = always a nono)

Before I opend my own all digital studio, I worked in a lot of mid priced studios - standard fare was usually an Otari MTR 90 with worn heads

Studers were always a treat!

[Musiclab]

I usually put the kicks on 1&2 tc on 24 and whatever I want in between. Although I always try to use 23 last and if I'm using it, I'll print some low transient material that aint going to be used much.

[Hallirs]

Albums / tracks were you can hear T.C (som times you can hear it in fadeouts )

[poncival]

Hat on track 1 because you'll have plenty of hat in the rest of the drum mics if there are any problems with the edge tracks. SMPTE on 24 of course but that means you can't put a tambourine or a shaker on track 23 because sometimes the high frequency transients will cause SMPTE to drop out if there are cross-talk issues. I have had problems with this if I print the click too loud to track 23 also, so if I have the room to spare I try to put the click on 22 and skip 23 but usually I end up putting some BG vocals there or something anyway... Otherwise you can pretty much do whatever you want, although this is a typical layout I used on Soulfly, etc.

1.hat
2.kick
3.snare top
4.snare bottom
5.tom 1
6.tom 2
7.tom 3
8.ride
9.OH L
10.OH R
11.RM L
12.RM R
13. RM C
14.Bass DI
15.Bass Mic
16.Gtr 1
17.Gtr 2
18.Gtr 3
19.Gtr 4
20.Gtr Solos etc
21.Ld Vox
22. Dub Vox
23. Click (printed kind of low to avoid possible dropouts)

Of course most of the time I will not track vocals on to the 2" and just track them into pro tools because people don't seem to want to wait around for the tape to rewind anymore... So that frees up 21 and 22 for more guitars!

Another thing somebody really famous told me once... "don't use track 13, it will just end up getting erased or something anyway!" Triskadecaphobia at its finest!